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Review: Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays

Well, after nine years of waiting, we’ve finally gotten a new Scooby holiday special. Was it worth the wait? For the most part, yes. I wouldn’t say Haunted Holidays as good as the previous DTV special, Spooky Games, but it’s definitely a lot of fun.

The Plot: Scooby and the gang are helping with a parade at a local toy store when a snowman attacks threatening to shut down the toy store for good!

I was a bit worried Haunted Holidays wouldn’t have much new to offer, considering they were using a snowman as the villain again. But in the the end, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Haunted Holidays offered just the right amount of classic Scooby mystery solving, gags, and good old Christmas fun to keep me entertained. The Sinister Snowman turned out to be a pretty cool villain actually. Unlike the snowman in “A Scooby-Doo Christmas“, this snow beast can shape shift. One of the coolest moments of the episode is when The Sinister Snowman transforms into a giant ice spider and chases Shaggy and Scooby.

And of course, Haunted Holidays offers all the standard Scooby Doo tropes. Monster attacks, gang investigates, Shaggy and Scooby get chased, and the villain gets unmasked in the end. In fact, it’s all very predictable. While that usually would be a negative for me, I think the simplicity of it is why this episode worked for me. It reminded me of classic Scooby, sometimes more than something like What’s New Scooby-Doo ever did.

The DVD: “13 Spooky Tales: Holiday Chills and Thrills” offers twelve other episodes along with Haunted Holidays. Most of these episodes have been released before. Tenderbigfoot, Snow Job Too Small, and Rocky Mountain Yiii! are all new to DVD. But outside of that, there’s the very good chance that you own these episodes already. Even so, I would recommend getting this just for Haunted Holidays and the few unreleased episodes even though it doesn’t seem like a lot.

The Verdict: No, Haunted Holidays is not the best Scooby-Doo episode ever made. But it is a lot of fun and is certainly better than some of the recent DTV movies. And while the DVD may not offer much new content, but it’s worth picking up for the right price. 8/10.

^They were made for regular TVs, so yes. The only way they'll ever be widescreen is if they get remastered and new art is added to each side, or more likely, they are edited to cut out the top and/or bottom of the video so that it fits 16x9.

'What New Scooby Doo?' was produced at least partially for widescreen, with the third season been shown in true widescreen (not cropped) on TV in Australia long ago. I suspect the complete series was produced for widescreen, but we will never know for sure, unless it is added to digital service like iTunes.

Too many cartoon series from Warner Bros. were cropped to full screen on DVD and TV in the past. 'Shaggy and Scooby Get a Clue!' is another good example in the case of Scooby Doo, produced for widescreen, but only full screen on DVD and TV.